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Napoleon gives General André Masséna the title Prince d'Essling in January and is married March 11 by proxy at Vienna to the Austrian archduchess Marie-Louise, 18, daughter of the emperor Franz I, in a match arranged by Austrian foreign minister Metternich and negotiated by Field Marshal Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg in his capacity as minister to France. The "little corporal" hopes to father an heir.
Tyrolese patriot Andreas Hofer, 41, defeats a Bavarian army in a rebellion against Bavarian rule but is later defeated by combined French and Bavarian forces, forced in hiding, betrayed, and shot February 20 at Mantua.
Prince Christian of Holstein-Augstenburg is elected heir to the Swedish throne but dies suddenly in May and is succeeded as crown prince by Napoleonic general Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, 47, who will succeed to the throne in 1818.
France annexes Holland July 9 following the abdication and flight of Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte, who has been king since 1806 but refused to join Napoleon's Continental system. The emperor annexes other lands along the Channel and North Sea coasts, including Bremen, Lübeck, Lauenberg, Hamburg, and Hanover in an effort to discourage smuggling of British goods that continue nonetheless to enter European markets.
Napoleon agrees to the reinstatement of former chancellor Karl A. Freiherr von Hardenberg, who has offered to help restore Prussian finances and enable Berlin to continue making its indemnity payments to the French. Hardenberg regains full powers as chancellor and supervises the interior and financial ministries as well. Prussia's Queen Louisa dies of a pulmonary embolism July 19 at age 34. Napoleon has tried to destroy her reputation, but his charges have only endeared her to her people. She has borne eight children and is called "the mother of the nation" (Landesmutter). Hardenberg embarks on a series of reforms that will include simplifying and unifying excise duties, levied up to now only in the towns, and imposing property taxes on the nobility, which up to now has been exempt.
Austrian chancellor Philipp, graf von Cobenzl dies at Vienna August 30 at age 69, having failed to gain Bavaria in exchange for the Austrian Netherlands.
The British secretary of state for foreign affairs George Canning, 40, resigns September 9, saying that the War Office is hampering progress in the Peninsular War. The secretary for war and the colonies Robert Stewart, 41, marques of Londonderry and Viscount Castlereagh, thinks Canning has called him incompetent and challenges him to a duel. He wounds Canning in the thigh and disgraces him.
The Battle of Busaco near Coimbra, Portugal, September 27 pits a 50,000-man Allied army under the command of Viscount Wellington against a 60,000-man French army commanded by Marshal André Masséna, now 52, who is distracted by his mistress and neglects to reconnoiter before the battle. Wellington's force includes 24,000 Portuguese. He inflicts 4,600 casualties while losing only 1,250, and withdraws to Torres Verda; the French retreat November 14 after finding that the Allied position is too strong and that they themselves face starvation.
The 74-gun Royal Navy frigate H.M.S. Minotaur goes down December 22, taking 480 lives.
The emperor Napoleon proposes to Russia's Aleksandr I that they join forces for an invasion of India, Mountstuart Elphinstone heads a British mission that meets Afghanistan's Shah Shoja at Peshawar to counter the threat, the shah promises to oppose passage of foreign troops through his territory under terms of a treaty of friendship concluded June 7, but he then hears that Kabul has been occupied in his absence by the forces of Mahmud and Fath Khan, who rout Shah Shoja's forces and oblige him to take refuge with the British at Ludhiana, where he will remain until 1815. Governor General Gilbert Elliot uses his diplomatic skills to snuff out the Franco-Russian threat to British power in India and later in the year conquers the French islands of Bourbon (later Réunion) and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean as well as Napoleon's Dutch East Indies possessions of Amboina and the Moluccas (see 1811).
Madagascar's king Andrianampoinimerina dies after a 13-year reign and is succeeded by his son, who will reign until 1828 as Radama I, conquering the Betsileo ethnic group in the southern part of the central highlands, overpowering the Sakalava ethnic group, and extending Merina power over nearly the entire African island while playing off the British and French interests that compete for control (see 1817).
Spanish colonists in South America proclaim loyalty to Ferdinand VII, who remains a French prisoner at the château of Valencay. A provisional government of the Río de la Plata is established in Ferdinand's name May 25, a similar junta is established at Caracas, and another at Santiago, but colonists at La Plata (later Sucre) in the Andes have been in rebellion since last year, a junta at Buenos Aires leads an independence movement against Spain, and it receives support from Uruguayan soldier José Gervasio Artigas, 46, whose corps of irregulars (Blandengues) gain a brilliant victory over the Spaniards at Las Piedras and lays siege to Montivideo. When the Spaniards call in Portuguese reinforcements from Brazil, Artigas leads some 16,000 people in a strategic withdrawal into Argentine territory (see 1811). Buenos Aires sends a small army into what later will be Paraguay under the command of Manuel Belgrano, but he is driven out.
Mexican rebels led by the Creole priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, 57, capture Guanajuato, Guadalajara, and Valladolid from the Spaniards to begin an insurrection that will culminate in independence in 1821. Hidalgo has been parish priest at Dolores, near Guanajato, and his battle cry, "Grito de Dolores," first shouted September 16, will be commemorated on Mexican Indepdence Day (September 16) each year when it is shouted from the balcony of the National Palace at Mexico City. Guanajuato's leading citizens barricade themselves in a granary (the Alhóndiga de Granaditas), but Hidalgo orders miner Juan José de los Reyes Martínez to set the building afire, Martínez straps a large stone on his back to deflect the Spanish bullets, and he succeeds in setting the building's entrance on fire before being killed. Hidalgo's men capture the granary September 28, but the priest loses control of his forces, and they massacre most of the town's Creole elite as slaves murder their former masters. Patriot Gertrudis Bocanegra, 45, has persuaded her soldier husband to quit the Spanish Army, and she joins a rebel group led by Manuel Muñiz, taking along her husband and their 10-year-old son. She raises an army of women, persuades her daughters to join, carries vital messages between rebel groups, and plays a major role in the attack on Valladolid (see 1817). The rebels approach the capital with an ill-equipped peasant force of 80,000, but Hidalgo has been appalled by the rapes and looting committed by his men at Guanajuato, and a small Spanish Royalist force under Felix Maria Calleja del Rey, 60, forces the rebels to retreat November 6 (see 1811).
President Madison takes advantage of an insurrection in west Florida to seize Spanish territory whose ownership was not clearly defined in the Louisiana Purchase treaty of 1803. What later will be part of Alabama, part of Louisiana, and part of Mississippi are annexed October 27 (see 1818).
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall rules in the case of Fletcher v. Peck that the Georgia law rescinding the 1795 law in which Yazoo land was sold to developers was an unconstitutional infringement on a legal contract (see 1802; 1814).
Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln dies at his native Hingham, Massachusetts, May 9 at age 77. He suppressed Shays' Rebellion in 1787 and served as collector of the Port of Boston from 1789 until last year; U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Cushing dies at his native Scituate, Massachusetts, September 13 at age 78. President Madison nominates Marblehead, Massachusetts-born congressman Joseph Story, 30, to take the seat vacated by Cushing's death, and Story will serve with distinction until his death in 1845.
Prussia abolishes serfdom and gives ex-serfs the lands they have cultivated for their landlord masters, allowing them to sell the lands if they so choose, but Prussian peasants will live for nearly a century under conditions not far removed from serfdom (see 1807; Russia, 1858).
The New South Wales Corps is recalled to England on orders from its new Hebrides-born governor Lachlan Macquarie, 48, who was appointed to the post in April of last year, having served with the British Army in North America, Egypt, and India (see Rum Rebellion, 1808). Former governor William Bligh is vindicated, Maj. George Johnston will be dismissed from service next year, and John Macarthur will not be able to return to New South Wales until 1817 lest he face charges in the affair. He will spend the next few years studying the English wool market. Lachlan Macquarie will remain governor until 1821.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin estimates the total value of U.S. manufactured products at $120 million for the year. In some lines, says Gallatin, the nation is now self-sufficient. Since assuming office in 1801 he has succeeded in reducing the national debt by $14 billion and built up a surplus despite expenditure of $15 million for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and he has inaugurated the practice of giving Congress meticulous reports of the nation's fiscal situation.
John Jacob Astor organizes the Pacific Fur Co. (see 1808; Astoria, 1811).
Barnstable, Massachusetts-born sea captain William F. Sturgis, 28, returns to Boston after 13 years at sea and enters into a partnership with John Bryant that will for the next 40 years handle by some accounts more than half the trade between the Pacific northwest and China. Scion of an old Cape Cod seafaring family, he worked for James and Thomas Handasyd Perkins before going to sea in 1797, has learned the languages of Native Americans in the northwest, developed a reputation for fairness, and will soon deal (as will Astor) in opium as well as in furs (see 1818).
Amoskeag Manufacturing Company is founded on the Merrimack River in the New Hampshire town of Amoskeag that becomes Manchester, taking its name from the great English milltown. The new company will soon be operating the world's largest cotton mill. U.S. cotton mills grow in number to 269, up from 62 last year (see Slater, 1789; Lowell, 1812).
English-born Australian merchant Samuel Terry, 34, moves to Sydney, opens an inn and a shop, and marries a widow. Transported to Australia after being convicted of stealing 300 pairs of stockings, he had opened a shop at Parramutta before his term expired 3 years ago and within 10 years will have made a fortune by speculating in urban and rural land, acquiring mortgages, and becoming a major stockholder in the Bank of New South Wales.
The Strangford Treaty signed at Rio de Janeiro February 19, ratified by Portugal 7 days later, and by Britain June 19 provides for exclusive British commercial privileges that will initially hurt Brazil's infant industry but eventually prove beneficial to her commerce (see politics, 1801; 1807). The treaty governs Brazilian imports of British manufactured goods and British importation of Brazilian sugar, coffee, and other agricultural products, with British residents to be tried only by crown-appointed judges, British Protestants in Brazil to enjoy freedom of worship, and Royal Navy vessels having rights to resupply themselves at Brazilian ports.
The Hartford Fire Insurance Company is founded by a group of Connecticut investors who issue fire marks to identify the company as the protector of its policyholders' properties (see New York fire, 1835).
The differential gear invented by German art publisher Rudolph Ackermann, 46, permits carriages to turn sharp corners. His steering mechanism will come into use later in the century on horseless carriages.
Balloonist Joseph Michel Montgolfier dies at Balaruc-les-Bains June 26 at age 69.
The screw-cutting lathe invented by engineer Henry Maudslay, now 39, can cut the same threads on a screw and make identical sets of taps and dies (see Maudslay, 1794; Wilkinson, 1798). Up to now it has taken skilled craftsmen to make screws, and while those with large threads could be forged and filed those with smaller threads have had to be cut by hand. Maudslay's lathe is so precise that it permits screws to be standardized, and nuts and bolts to be interchangeable, thereby revolutionizing industrial production.
Plymouth, Connecticut, clockmakers Seth Thomas, 25, and Silas Hoadley buy Eli Terry's clock business after fulfilling a 3-year contract to supply Terry with 4,000 clocks (see 1803). Thomas will sell his share in 1812 and go into business for himself at Plymouth Hollow (later Thomaston), organize the Seth Thomas Clock Co. in 1853, and leave it to his son upon his death in 1859.
Patents registered by the U.S. Patent Office begin a rapid rise after 20 years of averaging 77 per year.
Chemist Henry Cavendish dies at London February 24 at age 78. He has been noted for his eccentricities, and much of his work will remain unpublished for years.
Barcelona and Cadíz lose as many as 25,000 to yellow fever.
Organon of Therapeutics (Organon der Rationellen Heilkunde) by German physician Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, 51, pioneers homeopathic medicine (the term will not be used until 1826). Hahnemann announced the principle 14 years ago that if a drug produces symptoms in a healthy person then a minute quantity of that drug can cure a patient with such symptoms. He has worked with Peruvian cinchona and other drugs.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions founded by New England Congregationalists will send missionaries to a great many foreign countries and U.S overseas possessions, most notably the Sandwich Islands (see 1820).
English businessman George Medhurst, 51, invents a pneumatic-tube method for using air propulsion to send encapsulated messages from one point to another. The idea will not be implemented in his lifetime (he will die in 1827) (but see Clark, 1847).
Journalist William Cobbett pays a £1,000 fine and begins a 2-year prison sentence after denouncing the flogging of militiamen who have protested against unfair deductions from their pay.
Nonfiction: De l'Allemagne by Mme. de Staël appears in the first of three volumes, introducing German romanticism to French literature.
Novelist-editor Charles Brockden Brown dies in a yellow fever epidemic at his native Philadelphia February 22 at age 39.
Poetry: "The Lady of the Lake" by Walter Scott: "Hail to the chief who in triumph advances"; The Forest Minstrel by Scottish poet James Hogg, 40, who has been helped by Walter Scott to have his work published; The Borough by George Crabbe; The Genius of the Thames by Thomas Love Peacock.
Painting: Distribution of the Eagles by Jaques Louis David; The Battle of Austerlitz by François Gérard; Andromaque et Pyrrhus by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin; Allegory of the City of Madrid, General Manuel Romero, and The Disasters of the War (Los Desastres de la Guerra) (engravings) by Francisco de Goya; The Sons of Marshal Ney by French painter Marie Eléonore Godefroid, 32; The Arrival of the Archduchess Marie-Louise in the Gallery of the Château de Compiègne by Pauline Auzou; Portrait of a Woman by Gabrielle Capet; Happy Mother by Constance Mayer. Portrait painter John Hoppner dies at his native London January 23 at age 51; Johann Zoffany at Kew, Surrey, November 11 at age 77.
Theater: Cathy from Heilbronn or The Trial by Fire (Das Käthe von Heilbronn oder Die Feuerprobe) by Heinrich von Kleist 3/17 at Vienna's Theater an der Wien. London-born actor William C. (Charles) Macready makes his debut at age 17 as Romeo in a performance of the Shakespearean tragedy at Birmingham, where his father's company has leased a theater; he will appear at London's Covent Garden in 1816 and play melodramatic villains before establishing himself as a Shakespearean actor rivalling Edmund Kean (see Kean, 1814).
First performance: Music to Goethe's play Egmont of 1788 by Ludwig van Beethoven 6/15 at Vienna's Burgtheater.
Polish pianist Maria Agata Szymanowska (née Wolowska), 20, makes her debut as a concert pianist at Warsaw and then at Paris, winning the admiration of the Italian composer Luigi Cherubini (who will dedicate his Fantasia in C Minor for Piano to her).
The London music publishing firm Chappell & Company is founded by Samuel Chappell and some associates.
Poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, swims across the Hellespont (Dardanelles) May 3 in a romantic imitation of the mythical Leander, who would swim the mile and a half distance each night to be with his mistress, Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite agt Sestos on the European side, and drowned when the wind extinguished her lamp. Lame since birth and now 22, Byron swam, boxed, and read a great deal at Cambridge but has generally led a dissipated life. Byron has embarked on a grand tour, visiting Spain and Portugal (despite the ongoing Peninsular War), Malta, Albania, Greece, and the Aegean. His first effort to make the swim (in the opposite direction) failed because the water was too cold and rough; Greeks and Turks call him "the English Fish," and he writes to his mother, "I plume myself on this achievement more than I could possibly do on any kind of glory, poetical, political, or rhetorical."
English prizefighter Tom Cribb defends his world bareknuckle championship December 18 at Copthall Common, in Sussex, against American-born ex-slave Tom Molineaux, 20 (see 1807). Cribb is out of shape, and Bill Richmond has helped Molineaux train for the bout. Some 10,000 spectators brave the cold and wind to watch the event, the betting heavily favors Cribb, he is declared the winner after 34 rounds, but he clearly has been helped by his seconds toward the end of the 55-minute contest, Molineaux's success cheers London's black population of about 20,000, and he challenges Cribb to a rematch (see 1811).
The Munich Oktoberfest has its beginnings in a festival staged October 17 to celebrate the marriage of Bavaria's Crown Prince Ludwig (Louis), 24, to princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen, 18, who will bear him seven children.
French chemist Louis Nicolas Vauquelin identifies the active principle in tobacco and calls it Nicotiane after Jean Nicot (see 1561) and the plant Nicotiana rustica.
France makes tobacco a government monopoly.
The "dragon lady" of the South China Sea surrenders April 20 to China's governor general Bai Ling. A former prostitute, Zheng Yi Sao replaced her late husband, Zheng Yi, as head of the pirates upon his death 3 years ago. Backed by her lover and adopted son Zhang Bao, she has led a confederation of some 70,000 men and women whose 1,800 pirate junks prey on commercial shipping. So great is her power that she is able to negotiate a deal that gives her and some of her senior commanders high-ranking posts in the Chinese military while pardoning all of her pirates.
Paris inaugurates a column in the Place Vendôme August 15 to commemorate Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz in December 1805. Modeled after Trajan's column of the 2nd century A.D. at Rome, it is girdled with a spiral band of bronze made from 1,200 enemy cannon captured at Austerlitz, covered with bas reliefs depicting military scenes, and surmounted by a statue of Napoleon as Caesar.
Work continues at Paris on the Arc de Triomphe begun 4 years ago by the sculptor Clodion (Claude Michel), now 72. The emperor Napoleon ordered construction of the triumphal arch in 1806 to commemorate his victories, and it was designed by architect Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin, now 71, but a shortage of money will force suspension of work on the project next year (see 1838).
Scottish-born U.S. ornithologist Alexander Wilson, 44, sights a flock of passenger pigeons 250 miles long over Kentucky and estimates it to contain 2 billion birds, nearly half of all the passenger pigeons in the country. The birds account for roughly one-third of America's avian population (see 1800; Audubon, 1813).
The U.S. cotton crop reaches 178,000 bales as Eli Whitney's cotton gin of 1792 encourages production.
Nicolas Appert announces his 1808 discovery of vacuum-packed food in Le Livre de Tous les Ménages, published in June with the subtitle L'art de Conserver, Pendant Plusiers Annés, Toutes Les Substances Animales et Végetales.
The first English patent for a tin-plated steel container is issued to Peter Durand, who has devised a sealed cylindrical can. Food is forced into the tin through a 1½-inch hole, a patch is then soldered into place with a small air hole left open during the cooking process, after which another small drop of solder closes the air hole.
A London cannery that will soon be shipping thousands of cases of tinned foods for use by the Royal Navy opens under the name Donkin and Hall. Bryan Donkin has interests in an ironworks and has financed the venture, but since the tins are soldered by hand the cannery can produce only 60 tins per day (see 1812).
French banker Benjamin Delessert, 37, sets up beet-sugar factories at Passy to supply France with sugar in the absence of imports blockaded by the Royal Navy. The factories will produce more than 4 million kilos of high-cost sugar in the next 2 years (see 1811; 1814).
Physicist-mathematician John Leslie at Edinburgh uses an air pump to freeze water and becomes the first person to create artificial ice.
New York passes Philadelphia in population to become the largest U.S. city.
New Orleans has a population of 24,562, while all of Louisiana has 70,000 and no other city in the West has more than a few thousand. Pittsburgh has 4,768, Lexington 4,326, Cincinnati 2,450, Louisville, Nashville, Natchez, St. Louis about 1,000 each.
The U.S. population reaches 7,215,858 with nearly 4 million in the Northeast, 2.3 million in the South, and less than 1 million west of the Alleghenies.
France makes abortion a criminal offense as military losses reduce the population and give urgency to the need for fresh recruits (see 1814).
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